In a part of the Shenandoah Valley where history is prized especially deeply, just outside the village of Brownsburg, a relocated log cabin called Briar Hill is full of a special sense of the past. It embodies its own history dating back to the turn of the 18th century, when it was originally built on […]

The house, dating all the way back to 1742, didn’t need much work. But the five-acre property surrounding it did. When Sarah Van Steenburg bought a historic house near Barboursville in 2015, she appreciated the renovation work already completed on the structure, and she was attracted to what she calls the “money shot”—the view from […]

Like many people on the hunt for real estate during the housing bubble of the last decade, Mark Otis was being priced out of the market. So when he saw the old Esmont post office come up for sale on Craigslist in 2007, he took notice—both because it was a rare property he could afford, […]

Rob and Amylynn Johnson bought a Cape Cod on a quiet Albemarle street in 2012, knowing they’d give it a major renovation at some point. Not only was it not quite the house they wanted, but Rob is the owner of Green Mountain Construction, and the couple aren’t the type to shy away from a […]

Transforming the building that now houses Patisserie Torres was “almost like an archaeological dig,” says architect David Timmerman with BRW Architects. It was a yearlong process just to renovate the exterior of the 1820s building on the corner of Third Street NE and the Downtown Mall—a building that has seen its share of change and […]

Barbara Stettner grew up in the wine country of northern California, but she’d been in Virginia for 15 years before she found her weekend place in Sperryville. “It’s sort of like the coastal mountains [in California],” she says, looking toward the layered Blue Ridge views. In 2011, when she and her husband, Michael Ewen, bought […]

Over about a dozen years of living in their home on an Albemarle byway, the couple saw many changes. Their twin sons grew from age 5 to nearly 18, and the family’s use of spaces in the house changed along with the boys. More houses were built along their stretch of rural byway. And the […]

When Charles D’Angelo, managing director of D.C.-based Westmount Capital Group, first saw the Clifton Inn and its surrounding countryside, his initial thought was, “Wow.” “It’s a stunning property, from the 19-acre lake and Blue Ridge mountain views to the infinity pool with the canopy of trees overhead,” says D’Angelo. As a business enterprise, however, the […]

Katherine Kane had always imagined a greenhouse in a certain spot at her magnificent garden at Waterperry Farm in western Albemarle. And not just for sheltering plants. “There are two kinds of greenhouses,” says architect Jeff Bushman, who customized the kit that Kane bought from the English company Alitex. “There are purely service buildings, and […]

Tucked behind a 1920s-era house on a small Belmont lot lies a modern wonder: a water garden oasis featuring ornamental plantings, a raised deck surrounded by a black slate patio, a hand-carved fire pit and a mountainous stone structure from which a waterfall cascades gently into a tiered, purling river. The landscape plan was dreamed […]

Back in the ’80s, I ran a landscape crew at Albemarle Farm and its later incarnation as John Kluge’s Morven Farm. I kept a well-thumbed, constantly annotated 3×5 spiral notebook with a card for each month’s tasks for the areas we maintained: ornamental displays of shrubs, perennials and annuals; creekside buffers; an allee of willow […]

The first time she saw her house, no one lived there and the doors were not even locked. For years, its previous owner had held onto it, not yet ready to sell. But in a stroke of good timing, just when the current owner got interested, the house became available—something of a rarity in this […]

Agarden’s appearance depends on its purpose, says Marlene Condon, and sometimes messier is better. “Aesthetics for me are secondary,” she says. “The most important thing is the quality of the habitat for wildlife.” Condon is a Virginia-based nature writer and photographer who has penned columns for the Daily Progress and Crozet Gazette, written for C-VILLE […]

There are as many ways to garden as there are ways to cook. Some folks plant neat rows of vegetables; others create geometric arrangements of herbs. Traditional ornamental gardens in our part of the world might feature forsythia, crepe myrtle and daffodils—plants that originate in Asia, Europe and other faraway places. But for gardeners sensitive […]

Each season has its sounds and smells. In the quiet of late winter stinky skunk cabbage entices winged insects hungry for carrion. Spring brings birdsong and sweeter breezes although nature continues the rotting meat theme with the lurid purple hue of paw-paw flowers. As we approach the equinox of June 21, the legendary longest day […]

Though they’ve been around since the 18th century, painted floors (when done right) can be nostalgic, practical and surprisingly modern, says designer Franny Hurt. Back then, they were used in everything from modest farmhouses to Victorian mansions, helping to protect hardwoods before modern sealant was developed. Now they’re more multipurpose, used as a temporary (and […]

When your property overlooks the Moorman’s River, miles of verdant fields and finally the Blue Ridge Mountains, it seems obvious that the view is a primary attraction. Yet when one couple bought a Western Albemarle house in 2000, its siting and design didn’t do as much as they could have to connect occupants to the […]

Three decades in one house makes some people set in their ways, but, for others, it ends with an abrupt change. Tom and Carolyn Frazier had lived in Northern Virginia in a “typical, traditional D.C. house,” says Carolyn, and when they reached retirement they were ready for something “totally different. We wanted something modern and […]

Coming from Chicago, Albemarle County can seem like a different world. When Rebekah and Adam Goldberg were hunting for a local house to buy in 2014, they were trying to strike a balance between rural bliss and the neighborhood feel they were used to. “Adam wanted land and privacy,” says Rebekah. “I also like to […]

The house enjoys an extraordinary location, overlooking miles of Albemarle countryside from a high mountainside perch. Throughout the day the sun makes its crossing from east to west across a wide expanse of sky, while fields and woods unroll below for what seems like forever. When the present owners came here in 1996, they loved […]

When Lincoln Perry lived in a house on Altamont Circle, he would crawl up to the roof of the Altamont apartment building to get a good view of the North Downtown neighborhood’s brick houses and church steeples for some of his paintings, including the one shown here. This painting is part of a series that […]

It’s a sign of a Charlottesville that’s growing and changing. On a site on East High Street, where once stood two small single-family houses, architect and developer Richard Price is creating a cluster of modern buildings to provide “medium-density” working and living space. At the moment, much of the project is yet to be built—but […]

My circle of acquaintances happily includes many who make their lives in horticulture. Their answers to my idle query, “What is your favorite tool?” ranged from humorous—a professional gardener, 5-gallon bucket and a radio—to the obscure, among them the intriguing swan hoe, an ingenious asparagus knife with scuffle attachment and a number of beloved Japanese […]